After a decade of missing the playoffs and finishing below .500, the Rams finally turned things around in 2017 after hiring Sean McVay. They went on to make the playoffs two years in a row and even reached the Super Bowl in 2018, but then things went awry last season.
The Rams regressed a bit, going from 13-3 two years ago to only 9-7 in 2019, missing the playoffs for the first time under McVay. Some fans are feeling a little panicked and analysts are quickly hopping off the Rams bandwagon, but history suggests the Rams will most likely be just fine in 2020.
Aaron Schatz of Football Outsiders shared a graphic this week showing examples of teams who were in similar situations as the Rams are currently in. The graphic lists teams who finished in the top five of DVOA (Defense-adjusted Value Over Average) – a metric created by Football Outsiders to measure a team’s success on each play compared to league average – for two years before falling to somewhere around 10th to 16th.
The Rams were second in DVOA in 2017 and 2018, but fell all the way to 12th last season. There have been 11 similar cases in the past, and in only three of those instances, the team regressed further in Year 4 after a poor performance in Year 3.
Here's a graphic we're not going to end up using in this year's FO Almanac #LARams chapter. Teams with 2 seasons in the DVOA Top 5 who drop around where the Rams dropped last year. Many of these teams rebounded somewhat in Year 4. None of them collapsed. pic.twitter.com/ug0C5jL189
— Aaron Schatz 🏈 (@FO_ASchatz) June 10, 2020
As Schatz points out, none of the teams collapsed and fell outside the top half of the league in that fourth season. Some analysts are predicting a major drop-off from the Rams in 2020 after a difficult offseason, but Schatz’s research suggests that’s highly unlikely.
Of course, the Rams still have to take care of business and past history isn’t guaranteed to repeat itself. They still have to sort out the offensive line, improve on the ground and get better play out of Jared Goff. And on defense, Brandon Staley has to get the most out of his unproven players at inside linebacker and at edge rusher because those are two of the most uncertain spots on the roster.
Playing in arguably the best division in football won’t make life any easier for the Rams, either, but they still have the talent to finish above .500 and push for the playoffs – especially with seven postseason berths now in each conference.
It’s just a matter of executing on the field and improving in their weakest areas.